I'm not going to win NaNo

This has the ring of the familiar... every time I try to do NaNo, I get a little farther before I reach this point. I keep thinking that if I keep trying, one day I'll be able to extend it out until he end of November.

But I don't want to think that anymore. Before I get into this, I want everyone to realize that this monologue only only relates to how NaNo affects me personally. Most of my best writerly friends have participated in NaNo, and a surprising number have won it. I have nothing against it, except that I've reached the firm conclusion that, for me, it is a bad idea.

Now, it gets me writing, which is never a bad thing. I've done some good stuff this month, stuff I can be proud of. The problem for me is the word count requirements. If it were just ever so slightly less aggressive I could do it. But 1667 words a day is, for me, not only unmaintainable, but I find that it's damaging. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I refuse to take the quality of my writing below a certain point. Wouldn't you agree that the joy of putting semi-graceful sentences together is one of the best things about writing? When I write something that I know is bad and I know I'll have to weed out later... well, I feel like I need to take a shower. I also refuse to write long swaths of words that have nothing to do with the story and that I know will be deleted anyway. Call me lazy, but I don't want to do that much work.

So, here I am, after 25 days and 35,000 words into a story which I enjoy, and which I hope may turn into something.

I don't want to write anymore. I don't even want to think about it. I want to stick it in a drawer and never look at it again. I'm completely burned out. I don't blame the writing every day: I blame the aggressiveness of the goal. When I wrote Red Beret and the Paris memoir, I did them in 1,000-word chunks every night starting at 9 p.m. I was able to maintain this pace for 3-4 months in both cases. When I looked over the previous night's work, I was happy with what I had done and I was ready to do more. With this project I don't care if I never write another word.

And that, my friends, is not, or at least should not be, the culminating point of NaNo. You don't want to work on something for a month and then drop it like a Columbia House subscription. You don't want to see a good idea whiff right past you while you're too caught up in the numbers and word count to see where you're going wrong.

I'm still planning to participate. I like the community, I like the energy and the good vibes, and I like the fact that someone is holding me accountable (by someone I mean that little number counter thingy) to be productive and write every day. But this 50,000 word goal is for the birds. If it was 35,000 or even 40,000, I could support it. So with that in mind, I'm still going to participate, and either spot myself 10-15k words, or just decide that not winning is acceptable.

Here's an idea, one I've bandied about and received no support on: NaNoWriQuo - National Novel Writing Quarter.

In my experience and in talking to people, the habit doesn't fully sink in after a month. People get burned out like me and stop writing. Not only that, but 50,000 words is too few for a novel, for all but a couple of genres (it's certainly too short for fantasy-science fiction that most people seem to be writing, anyway). Why not take 90 days and write 90,000 words?

It's the idea that a little bit every day will keep you interested, keep you fresh, rather than the head-first deep-dive you get caught up in here. I mean, there's so much emphasis on so many words, and so many of the excerpts I read are such crap... can't we all just slow down a little bit and give ourselves a chance at building something of lasting quality?

Well, that's what I'll be doing anyway. I'm taking a week or two off to get back on track with reading (still have 3 books to go this year), then I'm going to start the real process of trying to write a novel. In my heart I'm still jazzed by L'Esprit s'en fuit, no matter what my tired mind is saying. I need to do research, I need to start to do some in-fill of plot details, and I need to rethink one of the major character arcs.

I still may report word count here, because it's kind of a nice thing to see as it goes along, slow and steady, just as it should...

An Almost Love Scene

I like how this scene came out, and consider it high validation regarding my decision to do NaNoWriMo this year. I don't pretend that it's great or that it's the way it will be after a final edit. I just liked it and wanted to share, that's all. Nyah.

The only things you should need as set up are these:

• I'm working with a style that's unfamiliar to me. It's much more dramatic and fun, but also a little strange. I'm using fragments and stream-of-consciousness blocks to convey more narrative emotion than I'm used to... all grammatical infractions are therefore intentional.
• The narrator is Marc, younger brother (around 15 years old) of the main character, a French gentleman (a Vicomte) named Remy
• When Marc sees white, it usually triggers fantasies about a girl named Charlotte
• Remy is in love with Genevieve, but Marc has barely so much as looked at her before this scene

>>>
Remy stood in the doorway wearing his second skin, the blue jacket that had worn thin at the armpits and buttonholes. It was not quite six in the morning, and his face showed anger such as he never showed before at least 3 in the afternoon. It would be a long day.

“That cow can’t milk herself. We need milk, the butter is long gone, and you are the one who volunteered to—“

“I know, I know. You’ve told me every morning for the last...” I think I drifted off to sleep.

He jerked my legs out of the bed and threw my shirt at me, the one I’d been wearing for two solid months with only a few washings.

Stool, bucket, udders, squeezing, whiteness, milky, creamy... my Charlotte was my only thought. My Charlotte, my Goddess, her ankle and her slip. Her black eyes in the middle of white perfection. The crimson on her lips, the crimson [from the cut] on the back of her hand, the crimson of my cheeks when she looked at me.

Squeeze, crimp, pull, grip, grope, fondle, knead. Hands on skin, hands on white. Charlotte! Hands in white liquid, drinking her, spilling her out of my mouth, consuming her, every drop infusing my soul with her scent.

I imagined things I didn't fully understand. What do I do with my hands? What do I do with my mouth? How do I hold her? How does she lay? Am I supposed to be on top of her? Are we supposed to take our clothes off first? I might enjoy that well enough to prolong it for hours. Shoulder straps and lace. Pins in her hair, removed one by one, pulled out without a tug. Maybe a slight tug... I watch her eyes as they wince in pain. Then she looks at me, smiling and biting her lower lip. I pull another pin and this time I’m not careful. She gasps, her sweet breath hitting me like honey. I put my fingers on the back of her head, then run them up up up, weaving my fingers into her mane, pulling her head to me, gripping her roughly. She smiles, mouth open, and looks over my shoulder, looking in a daze as though her mind is elsewhere. But I know it’s not. I feel the skin of her breasts on my chest. I run my hand from her breast down her side, to her waist, to the curve that becomes her hip. I feel the bone there, sharp and perfect. Then my hand runs inward, down down down.

I run my hands under the milk as it comes out in spurts.The inhabitants of my father's estate, both permanent and temporary, will drink the milk of my fantasies.

Hands on my shoulders, soft hands. I’m not startled, in fact I expected it. My Charlotte has come for me, hearing me across the—

“Marc. I said, are you okay? Can you not hear me? Are you well?”

Genevieve stood in her peasant gown, a single layer protecting her from the world, from Remy’s hungry eyes. If only my white fantasies could be separated by a single layer, rather than an ocean. How I needed my living Goddess then!

Imagining Charlotte standing where Genevieve stood, concentrating all my desires in the world in that tiny woman, I could see how Remy could burn for her. I began to wonder if she was actually Charlotte, here in the flesh. I leaned in to her.

“Marc? What are you? What has gotten into—“

I kissed her full on the lips, I took her in my arms and felt—or did I just imagine it?—felt her slacken, give in, give me a fraction of a second of a glimpse into the world of sensual pleasure. Her lips were hot and alive, and as they parted I felt moisture, the essence of another human being, alive as my own and giving me energy. My cheeks flushed, my loins tingled, and my heart swelled with the certainty that she needed me as badly as I did her.

A fraction of a second is all it lasted. She pushed me away, teeth gritted and struggling.

“Marc! Let me go! Have you lost your mind?”

The room was black with night, lit only by a tiny lamp. The barn, broken down and half-burned, materialized in front of me. I realized that Genevieve’s softness, her yielding to my fantasies for the briefest flash, was a gift to me. She gave me this because she knew I was a man who couldn’t make it much longer alone. The offense she took now wasn’t sincere. It was her obligation. I had always considered her to be a saint, a helper of those in need, but I had never known just to what extent she understood the suffering of others in non-material terms. Had I not been so lost in love with my white Charlotte, I might have fallen for Genevieve as deeply as Remy had.

“I—I’m so sorry, Genevieve. I don’t know what came over me.”

She rubbed her shoulder, which I'm sure I bruised.

“I think we’re all on the point of starvation. You couldn’t help yourself.” She looked down. “Sometimes I’m surprised other members of the household haven’t taken more liberties.”

She said nothing for a moment. Something in the back of my neck burned. “Has someone violated you?”

Her lower lip trembled for a moment, then she looked at me.

“No, it was nothing. I shouldn’t have said a word.”

My fists clenched. I was angrier than I had any right to be.

“Who was it? Was it Remy? I’ll kill him, the—“

“Non!” her eyes were wide. “No, it wasn’t your brother. You must know that he would never do something like that to anyone. It was someone... else.”

“Tell me now. Tell me so I can make it right, so I can make him pay.”

She looked up at me for several seconds. Her lip trembled and the saintly gloss normally in her eyes was replaced by anguish and tears.

I can’t tell you. You mustn’t tell anyone else, either. You can’t—“

“I’ll kill him! What did he do to you? Who—what have you had to endure?”

“It was just another man desperate for the touch of a woman. There are many such men in this part of the country, even in this house. The people have been so miserable for so long. Don’t you remember what life was like before they took the Bastille?” She looked toward the barn door behind me, as though through it she could re-enter the past.

“How can you talk this way? You are telling me that you’ve been raped, and you’re prepared to give your attacker the excuse of the revolution?”

“It’s over and there’s nothing I can do about it now. Bringing the accused party to some violent end wouldn’t help me any more than it would help him. I’ve locked it away in my heart forever, and I beg of you, do the same. For the good of this house, do the same.”

I said nothing. I felt more rage than I could describe. Rage, built from the day I bit the stranger’s finger off, to the pools of blood outside the Bastille, to months and years of near-death existence. I knew that I had to either fight somebody or, or do something I could never bring myself to say out loud. With the rush of emotions I had lived through just since I began to milk the cow, I deduced that I would rather kill a man than do the same as had been done to Genevieve. That is a flower I could never pluck.

“Genevieve.”

Her eyes regained the look of the Saint as she looked back at me.

“You know that I don’t have it in me to do what—what he did to you,” I said.

“I know.”

“I don’t need the physical sensations. I need the warmth and human connection.”

She put her arms around me in a motherly embrace.

“You will have all of that which you could require. Don’t mistake my refusal as anything but an honor to my wedding vows. If you need to know you are loved, know that I love you like a--like a sister.”

My throat tightened and tears began to fall from my eyes. I let out a sob, then another one followed. Within a minute I had soaked her gown with my tears.

All the while, my sister, Remy’s Genevieve, stroked my hair and whispered to me in a language without words, the one I had heard her use so many times with her infant son.

So it turns out I'm writing fanfiction...

I am no fan of fanfic. I don't have a lot of respect for it or for those who hold it as a credential. Now, I'm starting to come around to the concept because of incandragon. When someone of such talent, intellectual curiosity, and insight into the business of writing tells me I need to start paying attention, I know she's probably right. That's the only reason the first two sentences of this entry aren't the relentless screed you would have seen had I written this post six months ago.

I once quit a writer's group over fanfic. The de facto leader introduced herself to me as a published, award-winning author, and the proceeded to give me the most worthless, ignorant, and contemptable criticism I've ever received. If you don't know me, you should know that I love receiving good criticism from people I respect. The notes from Jill were just stupid. I kept her notes on a draft of my "Door Carver" story just so I could have a good laugh when I felt down about its progress. In that story, the main character has an active imagination, to the point that there is barely a separation between his play world and his real world. In her criticism, she told me that if I didn't specify "in his imagination" every single time he was making something up, nobody would understand.

"Treat your audience like they're first-graders," she told me. "That's how I'm able to come across so well in my work."

She and I seek different audiences.

I quit that group when I found out that "published" meant "posted a story to a web site", and "award-winning" meant "won a popularity contest on a Buffy fan forum". That was enough for me and I haven't been back. I've always wanted to write stories in the Twin Peaks universe, maybe even the X-Files, but it never occurred to me to cite any of that as a credential, or even tell anyone I had done it.

All that said, though, I do see how it could be a fantastic writing exercise: you're given the opportunity to work on your chops in description, plot, set pieces, etc., without all the responsibility of coming up with the background universe. It's a pretty cool idea, like a paint-by-numbers border around a centrally blank canvas.

Which brings me to the point...

My NaNo novel is a soap opera set in the French Revolution. It's going pretty well, because I get to narrate a scene from the point of view of a couple minor aristocrats caught up in the mob storming the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Eventually the guillotine will make an appearance.

But last night as I was inventing surnames, I couldn't think of one for the mysterious femme fatale, "La Marquise". I have a very clear picture of her, even down to the kind of jewelry she wears and the timbre of her voice. But as I went over the list of names, it occured to me that I didn't need it yet: my characters were running down an alleyway to escape the mob when they happened across La Marquise's driver, wearing peasant clothing and waiting near a small apartment in the wrong wrong wrong part of town. I realized that the name on the door wouldn't be her name at all: it would be the name of a lover she stays with occasionally when she feels like slumming.

My fingers started typing the name before I understood fully what I was doing. When I was finished I sat back and thought about all the implications, not of just using the name, but of inserting a small set of characters from a classic of French literature into my own. I don't know if I'm going to keep it this way if I ever do anything with the novel, but right now it's fun, it's subtle, and it allows me to play in a universe I've wanted to play in since I discovered the source material in 1988.

The name on the placard? Danceny.

Now here's the first ever Habeas Blogus "Internet Research" contest:

What story am I borrowing from?

The prize: you will receive some bragging rights, a digital pat on the back from me, and the right to be asked to help me do internet research should I ever need it. Good luck!

Okay, so I'm doing it too...

I make no promises, nor do I obligate myself to anything. This is just an attempt to get some discipline back into my writing.

1,667 words a day is achievable, and I've held that pace before, but not for 30 days straight. When I wrote the Paris travelogue it was in 2,500-3,500 word bursts for several weeks, but I took a few nights off.

But my main problem with this, with all of NaNoWriMo, is that it takes place in November. For anyone who just sees this blog, the literary side of me, it may come as a surprise that I'm a bit of a sports fan. College and professional football play their best, most important games during November. So, my proposal (to myself) is this: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights, I can only watch football during and after I've finished my word count for the day. That will mean I miss a lot of the action, but I'll still be able to look up when Al Michaels gets really fired up. My outline and characters are pretty much done, so I should be able to just rip on through.

Research is a big problem and a priority, but once the gates open up I'm going to make up everything I don't already know. This will be exceedingly difficult for me, since for the Basque novel I spent hundreds of hours researching everything from agricultural yields in Gernika circa 1937 to the chemical composition of the dynamite used to assassinate Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973. I wouldn't go on until I had the facts right. I can't do that here. I'll just have to use Word's highlighter feature to mark areas where, if I do anything with it after November, I'll have to revisit something.

In thinking about what research problems I'm going to hit, I've already come up with a thousand questions I won't even begin to have the time to answer in the next few days: exactly what would be the title of a Marquis' son in France circa 1788? What do they call the slip, or petticoat, or undergarment worn by ladies of the period? What exactly is the procedure for getting dressed in the morning? And what are the differences between the procedures for men vs. women? If a French aristocrat owns land far away from Paris, but still involves himself heavily in the management of such an estate, what would be the likelihood of his being treated fairly by his "subjects" when the Revolution comes?

And many, many more. Expect a very fractured rough draft in terms of research. I don't intend to do much to fix it before the deadline.

Anywho, wish me luck! It'll be very nice to be writing again. It's been over a year and I miss it like I miss, well, Paris...